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Catalogs of People

These lists of people at Christiansbrunn derive from several sources. Few of them capture--or attempted to capture--the entire population of Christiansbrunn at any particular time.

The most common source is the membership catalog, a list of individuals recorded by a minister or pastor at a specified time. Sometimes catalogs were produced each year, sometimes less regularly. Some membership catalogs contain substantial information: an individual's birth date, parents' names, previous religious affiliation, trade or profession, date of entry into the Moravian church, date of first communion. Many, however, contain only a few of these categories. It is crucially important to note that the membership catalogs that survive from Christiansbrunn often do not capture the entire population of men and women living there--because most of these catalogs aim only to record the single brethren (often including youths and boys) who resided there. The married men at Christiansbrunn, as well as their wives and children, do not show up in these catalogs.

Another source made use of below are tax lists. These documents, too, only record a subset of individuals: those who fit the categories important to those who levied, or who had to pay, a provincial or county tax. So tax lists often do include married couples, which membership catalogs of single brethren would omit; but they do not mention the names of wives or of children, though they may count the number of children. Nor will such lists mention individuals who had not yet turned 21.

A few lists of the entire population of Christiansbrunn survive. Such lists from 1781, 1793, and 1795 are included below. These lists, almost uniquely, identify all the men and women--single men, husbands and wives, children of various ages--by name.

This catalog lists all the single brothers in Bethlehem and Christiansbrunn: we have included here only the men and boys identified from Christiansbrunn. Two pages of this catalog seem to identify men who lived at Christiansbrunn, but nearly every individual on these two pages occurs only on this list of individuals at Christiansbrunn and, in some cases, we know that they did not live there at this time. We have concluded that these two pages list single men at Bethlehem, not Christiansbrunn, although the catalog does not make this clear. We have identified these individuals, who appear on these pages but probably did not live at Christiansbrunn, in brackets.

This membership list includes one name that we could not identify in other Moravian sources: "John Gembold," listed among "knaben" (boys). Another 1752 list, part of an extensive specification of land, improvements, animals, and people (BethCong 424, MAB), also contains a list of "single men at Christiansbrunn." The list is identical except that BethCong 424 does not include Johann Georg Huber and does include a name that may be "Georg Hoelder."

This list appears in the Nazareth diary at the start of the year 1756, along with catalogs of people at Nazareth, Gnadenthal, Friedensthal, and the Rose Inn. Another loose copy of this list exists, which also specifies the families who took refuge (from Indian attacks) at each of the Upper Places, including Christiansbrunn, as of 26 January 1756.

This catalog includes all persons included in the Bethlehem Economy, and so lists individuals in Nazareth, Friedensthal, etc.,--and also missionaries at Pachgatgoch (since the Bethlehem Economy supported them).

In this catalog (which contains entries for the congregation at Nazareth as well), somebody has penciled in trades/occupations next to many of the names. These penciled-in trades have not yet been integrated into this website.

This catalog, which includes information about all the Upper Places, is interesting in part because it identifies some non-Moravian families and bound servants who rented or worked on some Christiansbrunn properties in the years after 1796, when the single brothers' economy was discontinued.,